you can still charge your sword and come up behind them and hit them. They just start turning sooner. I just got out of t3 fiendish fray arena-freeze.

You can successfully complete that room if you use your shield properly, and don't run around like a goon head waking up all the turrets. Yes if there is something else spawned there it's a bit difficult, try to keep your fight in a corner shield and hit the best you can.

Also, if you're solo in an arena... even team of two... using guns is fine. But most of the time it's better to charge your sword and come up behind them and get a charged it in before they start attacking. Another good way is to walk back and forth in front of it until it has the attack sign... shield. then run behind it and attack. You can do that in a way that wouldn't aggro the other turrets and keep it from hitting your team mates.

I find though if there are alpha wolvers or other things in their with the turrets I go through kill them one by one (yes even with the things trying to get me) and leave the last turret kill the wolvers or whatever that's left attacking me then go back and kill the last turret.

If you are having major problems fighting turrets in arenas you're doing something wrong. Yeah, some of them can be really hard, but most of them you can do what I said with minor difficulty.

I agree that the gun puppies are more annoying now that they get activated when you are nearby. In an arena on the third gate, spawns 8 gun puppies in Set2A and another gun puppies in Set2B. You may have to fight a total of 12 gun puppies at once, all of which surround you in a circle if you are in the middle of the arena (and also Set2A is guarded by a spike trap). This may be easy in tier 1, but try it in tier 3, stratum 6. It is very difficult when they are all activated.

I agree that they were hard as they were, and they did not need the new change.

please nerf them they're everywhere

AHAHAHAHAHA!

That was quite the hilarious description. Bullet hell games aren't for everyone. But I am a huge Disgaea fan too, if my name doesn't already give it away, dood!

Okay, I tested it.

The only difference is that now Gun Puppies can also detect you via proximity. They can "hear" you if you're up to four tiles away. (To be more clear: the sense range extends to the fourth tile starting from the Gun Puppy, so that there are three tiles in between.) Their field of vision hasn't been upgraded at all, they just have eyes AND ears now.

And now the Cutter is even less useful against them than before, since they'll start turning a moment before you reach them...

Their sense of hearing isn't perfect-- it takes about a second for them to realize you're nearby. This means you can slip past behind them with enough speed and some luck.

The old Calibur tactic-- sprinting up from the back or side, and then smashing them at point blank with the Calibur's charged attack-- still works perfectly. They can't turn quickly enough to catch you before you wallop them. And with teammates present, you can have player A hit it once to draw its attention while player B charges up an attack to crush it. They still focus first on players in range that have recently dealt damage to them.

...grmblgrmbl... Etna's first voice actress was amazing in comparison to the one she's had in subsequent titles. .. grmblgrmbl... and I don't even like her character that much... grmblgrmbl... Zetta all the way. DISPERSE, MY LOYAL BATTLE MONKEYS! DO MY BIDDING AND BUST A CAP!

I wouldn't compare Touhou to this game, but there is one similarity. YOU determine where attacks go. You may not be able to change the firing timing of gun puppies, but you can certainly change where the bullets go when it's locked onto you. When puppies are firing, simply stay still for a bit, so that all the bullets coalesce and give you ample room to run through. Moving unnecessarily (or not moving when you need to) gets you killed in both games. When you're in a party, try to make gun puppies fire at the nearest wall so people don't have extra bullets to dodge.

Shields are for security. It might be harder for people farther away from the server, but generally I can dodge anything without a shield that can be done with a shield. The game server just has occasional response issues, so I prefer to shield.

Also, cutters still kill puppies. Just start attacking before you reach the enemy; the cutter is that type of sword. Your last hit still interrupts. Given what I've seen on these forums, people are incredibly closed off to the thought of attacking nothing, even if it's just a gunshot to trigger dodge/shields.

The difference is that Etna doesn't wear a hat.

Or clothes. (Almost.)

So I tried an arena solo in tier 3 to see just how hard it would be. And it was really hard.

It started with two rocket puppies and four greavers. That's six mobs that urgently must be killed immediately. And they're all coming after me because I'm solo. Fortunately, I had laid two shivermist busters before stepping on the party button, so the greavers were frozen temporarily. I decided that the rocket puppies were thus the higher priority, and killed them both quickly. I nearly died, but fortunately, got an early health capsule drop to refill my life.

Once the rocket puppies died, the next wave spawned: two darkfang menders and two retrodes. The greavers came unfrozen, and one died quickly, but that meant I still had three greavers chasing me around the room. I used my final flourish to interrupt them, with only one strike at a time, to get the broad angle attack. I ran around the perimeter of the room to keep away from the retrodes, while turning to attack when greavers came.

The idea was to slowly wear down the greavers and kill them. Except that that doesn't work when there are two darkfang menders spamming heals on them. I thought about trying to assassinate the menders, but decided that I needed to keep the focus on the greavers, since I could neither block them nor run from them. Once given an opening, I'd do a few attacks in a row to finish off a greaver, then to back to one attack and run to interrupt.

Finally, I killed the rest of the greavers. That made some darkfang thwackers spawn. At this point, I was nearly dead again, and probably would have died in one more hit. I ran around quite a bit and finally found openings to kill the two darkfang menders. Thankfully, when solo, their health is small enough that they'll die in one full sword combo, and without using their energy bubble.

After the darkfang menders were gone, the rest of the arena was easy.

Oh wait, this thread was about gun puppies? The gun puppies were easy. The group of four of them in the first arena was easy. The group of four in the third arena was easy. The group of eight in the third arena was easy. And the group of eight was rocket puppies. They don't automatically all activate at once. They don't do it until they see you, as before. Only one of the rocket puppies managed to get even a single rocket off. It got two rockets away, one of which I blocked.

So I think that's the solution: do what you should have done all along. Don't wake up the gun puppies gratuitously, but wait until you're ready to attack them, one at a time. Also, you know that the group of eight is coming at the end of one sequence of mobs in the third arena, so don't leave something nasty from the other sequence up when you make the group of eight gun puppies spawn.